In June 2023, several heavy rainstorms descended upon El Paso County, causing floods that turned roadways into rivers, caused catastrophic damage to infrastructure, and led to a disaster declaration from the Biden Administration.
At Tuesday’s El Paso County Board of Commissioners’ meeting, public works director Kevin Mastin said a future storm event is inevitable, and the county needs to be ready.
“This is going to happen again,” Mastin said. “We don’t know when. But we know it’s going to happen.”
The county commissioners agreed, voting unanimously to accept more than $2.7 million in additional federal funding from the National Resource Conservation Service and to authorize total expenditures of $3.9 million, with the county’s emergency reserve fund making up the $1.2 million difference.
The funds will be used largely to bolster damaged infrastructure in several areas of eastern El Paso County, including parts of Ellicott Highway, J D Johnson and Garrett roads, the Duckwood region, and Willow Springs Ponds, officials said.
The National Resource Conservation Service has provided Emergency Watershed Protection funds that allow the county to address repairs that are outside of the other federal programs like FEMA and the Federal Highway Administration, Mastin said.
“With the FEMA funds, we are able to repair our infrastructure and get it going again,” he said. “But it doesn’t address the long-term needs.
“As an example, imagine you need a root canal, so you go to the dentist, and he puts a little fluoride and a little Anbesol on the tooth, and you’re good to go. The pain is gone. But the root problem is still there, so the pain is going to come back if you don’t address it. That’s what we’re doing; we’re building up our structures so the pain doesn’t come back.”
Some of the restructuring will take place on private property in order to protect public infrastructure, county officials said.
“When these bridges went out last year, we had citizens out east who had to make 15- or 16-mile detours just to get to their houses,” Mastin said.
“What if someone had a medical emergency and needed an ambulance? The ambulance would have had to drive an additional 30 miles, round trip, to pick that person up and take them to the hospital. That’s the kind of thing we’re trying to protect against.”
District 2 Commissioner Carrie Geitner, whose district sustained “surprising and devastating” damage last year, expressed support for the project.
“As we continue to grow as a community, and as these roads are used more, we want to make sure that they are kept in good working order and that we are minimizing the impact on the residents in that area,” Geitner said.
Longinos Gonzalez, District 4 Commissioner, praised the commission’s prior efforts to build an emergency reserve fund.
“If we had to do this seven years ago, we would have had to cut $1.2 million from somewhere else in the budget, because we had zero dollars set aside for emergencies,” Gonzalez said. “The fact that we have these emergency funds, and are utilizing them properly, is allowing us to address these issues without affecting our current budget.”
Mastin said the expenditures might seem like a lot, but that they will save money in repairs when the next storm hits.
“This funding will allow us to get ahead of it and actually save money in the future from having to readdress this again,” he said.